Crowspeak beside Brisbane Grammar Oval

Alan Gould

Drone talk, crone talk, this mawk will underscore
all my amiable lessons with its gaga furore
of hidden clause and cause for cutting budgets to
  the core.
It's a poor whore's lamentation that the times are
  chaste and raw.

Dark talk, dork talk, vowels from the craw,
torque-wrench talk, or angle-grind, or tyros
  squawking war,
the crows have tensioned our attention with their
  tired scorn,
their stop-work growls of Up yours, sport! their
  seminars of garn!

As fellows tumble round a field with oi! oi! eeyah!
and coaches blast the slowcoaches with 'Avyagotitinya?'
the crows discourse and comment all according to
  their tempers
with argh! and bah! and farkh! as they ruffle their
  black jumpers.

So why do crows not gossip, not chortle, but must chaw,
must augur all their sterile news from dustbin dawn
  till four,
then flap away ungainly, black plastic on the air,

disconsolate, yes, but too self-righteous for despair?